


The Wayside | Timestamps

by bonememories



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Military, Mythology - Freeform, Prison, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-29 11:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19019068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonememories/pseuds/bonememories
Summary: Tory doesn't like looking outside the windows of the house. If he looks far enough, he might see the towering prison walls through the dense trees, and that would ruin the illusion.It's a nice house, really, this log cabin at the edge of the forest, and there's a fireplace and foods he's never seen before. There are warm beds that have more than one blanket and something his mom called a sheet, and there's only one bed in each room. He finds that a little silly, really. At least four or five beds could fit in one room alone. He doesn't know what they expect anyone to do with all the extra space.____Chapter One:ToryChapter Two:Sena





	1. A Flight for Freedom

Tory doesn't like looking outside the windows of the house.

If he looks far enough, he might see the towering prison walls through the dense trees, and that would ruin the illusion.

It's a nice house, really, this lovely log cabin at the edge of the forest, and there's a fireplace and foods he's never seen before. There are warm beds that have more than one blanket and something called a sheet (what they're used for, he'll never understand), and there's only one bed in each room. He finds that a little silly, really. At least four or five beds could fit in one room alone. He doesn't know what they expect anyone to do with all the extra space.

Outside, rain patters on the roof of the cabin, and his mother kneels on scarred knees, piling thin kindling up with little bits of dried leaves. They don't need the fire—Tory can still feel his feet—but they have three days here, and his mother told him when they arrived that they should take shameless advantage of all the amenities. _When you go,_ she told him, _fill this bag with everything you can carry._

His mother is really smart. She's seen all these things before, these devices and machines and foods. She knows how to use some of them, and even if she doesn't, she knows their names. Strainer, tea bags, dehydrated fruit. Salted nuts. Meat tenderizer, cutting board. There's a basket on the table filled with fresh fruit, but he's afraid to touch it. It's so colorful—bright-edged purple and soft pink and lime green and yellow. He just wants to look at it.

The only thing that dampens the festive mood is the _other_ red glow. Beside the slowly flickering flame and the spitting smoke, he sees the steady red light of the collar around his mother's neck. He knows there's a light on his, too, but he can't see it.

They slept here last night, and they can stay for three more nights. Three full days in the big house, and then his Mama says he'll leave on the morning of the fourth day.

The guards in the labor camp sometimes make these ugly faces as his mom kneels to scrub at the floors, and they'll say something like “looks good on her knees, don't she” and Tory doesn't know what to think about that. His Mama's pretty all the time, and he's not sure what standing or sitting or kneeling has to do with any of it, but the men laugh like they're talking about a different thing.

They do that a lot, adults. Tory doesn't like adults. Except his mom. She's nice.

They've told him his mother is here for fraternizing with men in an unlicensed house.

He understood most of the words—he's eight, he's not a baby—but there were a few he didn't know.

“What's fraternizing, Mama?” he asked her.

“It means to be acquainted with.”

Tory hasn't seen much of the outside, but he imagines it's a strange world where a woman can be arrested and sent to the labor camps for being acquainted with men. He didn't know that houses needed a license, and he doesn't know how to ask what sort of license they need. When he asked his mom, she was confused, too. “Maybe you mean taxes?” she'd said.

He doesn't know what he means. He decides the guards were lying.

But now isn't the time to think about those things. Now he's with his Mama in the nice house.

Tory doesn't like sleeping in the big room with the bed. It's huge and quiet and so frighteningly empty. He can't hear the old men snoring or making muffled noises as they roll over and burrow. The beds back in the labor camp are so close he sometimes ends up with someone's arm or foot on him when he wakes up. He's used to that. That's fine. He doesn't like the quiet at all.

His mother seems to understand. “Oh, Tory, dear. Go get the blankets.”

They will sleep by the fire again tonight, together.

Even years later, Tory never gets over that: nothing puts him to sleep quite so well as hearing someone breathing beside him.

On the second day, his mom loses the relaxed melancholy she had for the whole first day. She still smiles when he runs through the house, picking up strange and wonderful implements and asking about their function, but she's tense, long hands straining at her clothes, eyes following him as she chews on her lip.

“Tory,” she says. “You need to be safe out there.”

“I will, Mama. I promise.”

She moves forward on her knees, putting her hands on his shoulders and looking into his startlingly blue eyes which are nothing like her warm brown ones. He wants his Mama's eyes; sometimes he catches her looking into his like she knows them. It always makes her sad.

The hands on his shoulders move down his arms, and she pulls him into a crushing hug. “Oh, Tory,” she gasps. “Three days isn't enough. It's not near enough to prepare you for the things you'll see. I'm sorry, Baby. I'm so sorry. This is all I know how to do.”

He shakes his head, nuzzling against his mom because she's shaking. “I'll be fine. I promise.”

She shakes harder. That's what she's like on the second day.

On the third day, they don't really get out of bed. She presses her forehead to his, tells him she doesn't know much but she always knew how to survive.

“Don’t make waves,” she says. “Be quiet. Be normal. Be loved. Don’t be difficult.”

She repeats those words into his ears over and over until they are all he knows.

_Hide the tattoos. It is never good for people to see them. They will know what you are, and they can take advantage of that. Smile. Learn to smile really big so that people like you. Be very well liked as much as you can. Make friends who are worth something in this world. Nod when you catch the eyes of other people. When they bow, bow deeper. If they are amenable to it, compliment something about them. It has to be true. After a while, you will know what they want to hear. You will know what to do. For now, watch me. No, no… like this. Do as I do. Yes. Good._

She packs him a bag with most of the fruit from the untouched basket, and anything she thinks he can sell. She gives him her jacket because even though the sleeves are short on her, they go down past his elbows, covering the elaborate blue lines of the tattoo that marks him as a child born into the labor camps.

Her mood sours as evening falls.

Mostly, she cries.

“I didn't want to leave you, Baby. I never wanted to leave you. But you're strong and you're smart, and if you get too big they won't let you out. In just another year they can claim you into the system; I won't be able to bargain you out anymore. I have to do this. I love you, Tory, you know that, don't you?”

He wraps his arms around her, but they don't go all the way around. “Yeah, Mama. I love you, too.”

He can't get her to stop crying, but eventually, she stops all on her own, and she goes back to what she was doing earlier. _Don't stand out too much. Be kind but not too kind. Don't ever let anyone hurt you; you don't deserve it. Do what you have to. Sometimes you'll need to do things other people say are bad, but you do them to live. You do everything to live, you hear me? You're gonna live a long life, Baby. But you need to know how to act._

Morning dawns, and his Mama's eyes are dry as she tucks him into her jacket and puts his arms through the bag she's sending with him. He has her jacket. In her white, sleeveless prison smock, she must be cold.

She tells him she won't be cold for long. She'll be fine. Hurry along.

“Now, don't you come back here, Tory. You just keep running, but don't go out past the fence until your collar falls off. When it falls off, you'll know you can leave.”

He does what she tells him, because his Mama is smart, and she knows what she's talking about.

He doesn't go back. It takes him a long time to realize it, but he knows, in some part of him, that when his collar falls off, his Mama isn't waiting for him anymore. She's not anywhere.

When the light on his prison collar fades, she dies so he can be free.

The labor camps are so crowded, after all.

When Tory reaches the gate and his collar goes slack around his neck, he lets it fall to the ground, and he runs.

He keeps on running, for years.


	2. The Legend of the Beast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before he turns nine, Sena Vantaras knows hospitals like he knows the story of the Seeds. They don't even have to say _breathe in, breathe out, raise your arms_ or anything. He just knows.

 

Before he turns nine, Sena Vantaras knows hospitals like he knows the story of the Seeds. They don't even have to say _breathe in, breathe out, raise your arms_ or anything. He just knows. He knows the medicines and the procedures, the smell of the herbs his mom rubs on his chest, the sound of her voice as she props him up with pillows or wipes his face with wet rags and tells him stories.

_Once, when our Seren was a young planet, fresh and new, the Great Beast who fashioned the universe fell in love with the blue and green planet that had bloomed in its absence, a gem brighter than all the stars. On the planet were people, great hunters, dedicated men and women with unbroken spirits. With the children of the land, the Beast was also pleased._

Sena knows his father mostly as a concept. Michal Vantaras is a great man, the overseer of the Compound, the greatest general. His two older sons (product of his previous marriage) are both strong and solidly built like soldiers. They can run for miles without falling down. As it is, it's sometimes too much for Sena to go to the local prep school. He is driven there by carriage and picked up after lessons; he isn't allowed to walk now that the weather's getting colder, no matter how much he begs.

When he's nine, several events happen in short succession.

A few of the boys from school start picking on him. Nothing new, really. Sena doesn't care for their foolish and uninformed assumptions, the way they say the name of his mother's people like it's a curse.

Many people don't understand the beauty of Arlune, his mother says. Arlune does not ask for understanding, not from this country and its people. Not from anyone.

What's different, though, is that the boys are fourteen years old, and they're bigger and stronger than he is.

He finds their taunts mundane: his skin is oddly-colored; his black hair looks like a girl's; the Arlunian people eat children in winter—does his momma look hungry yet?

The first two are things he can't help, and the third is untrue. His mother says that people twist and call barbaric the things they don't want to understand.

 _So the Great Beast came down from the heavens to admire the beautiful planet. It watched the people and the land they worked, and was exceedingly pleased. At first, it only visited, but after a while it would not leave._ This, _the Beast thought,_ this is my greatest creation, the realization of all my endeavors. _And so the Beast traveled through the skies even though it was not its fate to do so. The Beast belonged in the river of the Universe, swimming through stars, but the cold stars held no favor with the Beast now._

The bullies don't give him a chance to tell them, and the ridiculousness of their anger doesn't keep him from getting backed into a wall and punched hard in the ribs until he's crumpled in on himself and gasping for breath. When he falls, they kick at whatever place they can reach. He tastes blood in his mouth, slick and metallic, from where he bit the inside of his cheek.

Later, he can't remember what exactly it is that they say, but it's mostly about his mom, her people, and what being part of that bloodline makes him. He's in pain, he feels like he's going to throw up, his head is throbbing from where it cracked against the rough stone when he fell. He just wants them to stop.

Vision fading, he reaches for the leg of the nearest boy, trying to keep the next kick from connecting.

Someone screams. Someone falls.

His vision is dark, and then everything is gone. He is in the hospital for a week that time.

It's the last time he ever stays in a hospital.

They tell him the boy who hurt him will never walk again. The nerves and bones and skin in his left leg just died. It became gangrenous and was amputated below the knee.

They say words like _Nullification_ and _Peripheral_ and _Class 1_ and _Seed_ but none of it gets to him except the part where no one wants to touch him.

_And the Beast was pleased with its journey. Life eternal can make a soul old, but the sweet blue planet gave the Beast peace. And so it remained. But its body, made from the stuff of stars, was not meant to be contained in one place. The Beast grew tired._

His mother comes every day, and she touches him even though she wears gloves up to her elbows. “Don't listen to what they say,” she tells him. “I'm sorry about what happened to the boy, and I think you are, too, but there's no reason to be ashamed. You didn't know. And you shouldn't fear or hate what you are.”

It's hard not to. Everything changes after that.

It's like he was never ill. Sena doesn't catch so much as the common cold.

His father starts looking at him, but he looks at him less like a son and more like a project, and soon it's decided that Sena will be transferred to an advanced school where he will be trained to be an officer.

He rarely sees his family, but his mother has another baby, a little girl, Hina, and he visits as often as he can. Hina is sweet, with eyes like Sena's and his mother's, but rich brown hair like his father's.

He does not stay in a hospital again, but he sees the inside of them a couple more times. When he is fourteen, before he's moved to a different Officer school, they open up the skin at his nape and a woman with blond hair puts something inside. “This is a CORE,” she tells him. “It's alive like you and me, and it will take root inside you. It will let us keep track of you. Do not try to remove it.”

Later, when has been decorated with all the pins and been the recipient of all the awards he can possibly gather, he graduates from Officer school at the top of his class.

_And even though the Beast grew tired, it stayed on Seren and watched the people toil to take sustenance from the land. After a long while, it began to die._

Usually the top graduates go to work in the Capital, but his assignment papers inform him that he will work at the Compound, near the border.

His Enforcer leads him to another room.

“You're dangerous,” he informs Sena. “You don't want to hurt anyone, do you?”

“Of course not,” Sena says. He always wears the gloves like he's supposed to. The only people he has touched in years are his mother and sister.

“Then lay down. The doctor will be here soon.”

They make a long incision, this time, along his spine. None of the Reaching, only old fashioned tools. His Seed will allow for nothing else. They have him anesthetized, but it still stings. The procedure takes about two hours.

He is informed that the device planted along his spine is a precaution.

“Of course,” he says.

_But the Beast cared not for its life. After some time had passed—short for the Beast but long for the people of Seren, the Beast died. And when it did, it shattered like glass and fell upon the land and sea, and they grew bountiful and rich. The peoples no longer toiled. And soon after, the first of the Children were born: triplets. The first Seeds. And the world rejoiced, for the God had given them magic. And they revered the Seed of the Void and the Seed of the Earth and the Seed of Change, and from them came many more, each one a gift._

His Enforcer gets him to his feet before the wooziness from the anesthesia has quite worn off. “All Seeds are dangerous, but you're uniquely so. You must understand why we had to do this.”

“Of course,” Sena whispers.

_And so it was in the land of Arlune and the lands all around. And the world was blessed with bounty._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I freaking love these characters. (That's why I make them _suffer_.) Any thoughts on the characters or universe would be appreciated. 
> 
> The concept for the main story is that Sena is an officer when the story starts, forced to work for the very people who oppress him and others like him for lack of other options and in the interests of staying alive, and Tory has managed to hide for most of his life in a small mining town, until he can't. Cue antagonistic headbutting and eventual resigned tolerance and shenanigans and friendship forged by clawing your way out of the jaws of death and REVOLUTION (kind of), among other things.

**Author's Note:**

> These are sort of planning/exploratory stories I wrote while trying to feel out the nature of the novel's universe. The events of the novel start over a decade later for both characters, so these stories are more for fun and character development than anything. They're also to keep me making Words, which is a goal of mine this year. I won't grow even a bit by letting this garbage sit and rot on my computer, so it's time to overcome my crippling terror and expose it to the world. 
> 
> Thanks to Tory's unreliable narration and Sena's... charming personality, Sena starts off as an "antagonist" in the main story (deuteragonist-to-be). Their struggles, though very different, are complementary, so they don't stay at odds forever. Any thoughts would be appreciated.


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